Food and other items are frequently packaged for retail purposes in shrinkable film that is then shrunk around the goods. The film may initially be in the form of a bag in which event the bag is open at one end to permit the insertion of the goods or a product and is then sealed and shrunk around the product. It is often desirable to be able to provide the bag with a means to easily open it, with a surface area upon which a label or printed matter may be placed, and with means for hanging the package if that is desired. It is therefore, a general object of this invention to provide such a package.
Representative bags and containers employing shrink film features are found in the following patents:
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,516,537 which was issued on June 23, 1972 to Robert L. Dreyfus et al there is disclosed a package in which a plastic container having shrunken film walls and a product in the container is constructed so that film walls extending beyond the closure seal of the package form a flange section or skirt which is provided with a notch for the purpose of providing a tear tab. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,249,659 which was issued on Feb. 10, 1981 to Henry G. Schirmer there is disclosed a package and method of producing the package by forming a pocket in a central portion of a sheet of wrapping material, which may be shrinkable thermoplastic film, placing a product within the pocket, folding the flat portions of the film into face-to-face contact and bonding the flat or flange portions together. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,000,325 which issued on Dec. 28, 1976, to Gad A. Rausing there is disclosed a pressurized plastic container formed with transverse seals with a flattened area between the sealing zones. U.S. Pat. No. 3,641,732 which issued on Feb. 15, 1972, to Masaaki Fujio discloses a package in which a product is enclosed in plastic film which is heat shrinkable and which provides a tear tab protruding sideways from the package. Another package, shown in a patent to the same inventor, is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,679,048 which issued on July 25, 1972. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,889,870 which issued on June 17, 1975, to Hugo Bender a welded bag of stretched polyester film is shown in which the edge region of the bottom weld is post-stretched. Accordingly, another object of the present invention is to provide a package which is an improvement over prior shrink wrap packages which are used to display products to retail purchasers.
A package employing shrink film to make a hang bag is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Ser. No. 734,375 filed by Wood et al on May 15, 1985 and assigned to the assignee this application. A further object of the present invention is to provide a package which, optionally, may be converted to a hang bag.
Another object of the present invention is to provide tear tabs which are immediately obvious to the consumer who is about to open the package. In many packages on the market today the opening means are obscured by printing of other subject matter on the package or the opening means consists of hard-to-separate overlying pieces of film. An object of the present invention is to overcome these defencies.
The objects of the present invention are achieved by the novel package which is described in greater detail below.